Now director Scott Derrickson has confirmed that – when he fired Benedict Cumberbatch through many strange dimensions – he was mirroring the psychedelics in the Paul Rudd-starring movie.

"This image here is obviously a nod to Ant-Man and the Quantum Realm, acknowledging that as one of the mysterious realms of existence," he says on the director's commentary for Doctor Strange (via Cinema Blend).

Our theories that Strange could help rescue the original Wasp (wife of first Ant-Man Hank Pym) – who was lost in the Quantum Realm – haven't played out yet, but Cumberbatch could easily follow up his Thor: Ragnarok cameo with an appearance in 2018's Ant-Man and the Wasp.

This isn't the first acknowledgment of a connection between the heroes, but it is the most overt.

"If you look up the study of quantum mechanics, when you get down that small, as Hank Pym says, space time is meaningless, and there's a lot of that stuff that applies to Doctor Strange," Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige told Cinema Blend in 2015.

Cumberbatch will be back in Thor: Ragnarok later this year, followed by a role in Avengers: Infinity War in 2018. Rudd and Evangeline Lilly will take on the title roles in Ant-Man and the Wasp next year, too.